landscapes at night

I have the G6 w/ all of the available lenses for it. I am going ot go to the Poconos to visit some family tonight. There's this one trail that has a beautiful view of the mountains and everything else, especially since it's into autumn, i wouldn't mind getting some shots. But at night, what would be a good setting on the G6 to use? Like shout i use RAW or JPEG, what white balance, exposure, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO? Because whenever i take night shots, they never come out right. Anybody have any ideas?

You shall shot RAW at night, because WB could be very uncertain in those situations. Our colour vision is pretty much desaturated at night to being able to choose a proper WB setting. Custom WB and Auto WB again wouln't work due to insufficient lighting. Shot RAW and select WB later on computer.
As for the exposure, use lowest ISO. Widest aperture(smallest number) for very dark situations, and small apertures(high numbers) for city scapes at night with many spotlights to prevent haloing.

Just use a tripod and either the remote control or the delay to avoid shake. I suggest manual, since there is no hurry. Take many, many shots of the same thing. If you have Photoshop CS2, you can use the Merge to HDR feature. Take some long exposures.

Absolutely shoot RAW.

Thanks guys, i'll post a few shots when i develop them through photoshop!

Mknabster is probably gone by now, but I'll throw in a few tips that I like about shooting with G-Series cameras at night.

- Use a tripod
- Set the camera in manual mode: f4 and 1/2 sec. for starters at ISO100. Take a picture, look at it, and add 1/2 sec. to your shutter speed until you get the exposure that looks best on your LCD. Keep adding time, leave your aperture alone.
- Auto WB works best for me, but try incadescent and see if you like the results.
- Set the camera to manual focus at infinity, and forget it. That's right, infinity.
- Use the 2 sec. (or 10 sec. if you prefer) shutter timer to reduce camera shake.
- Use RAW or JPG, whatever you're used to.

Lessons from the master! Thanks Scott, I am sure mknabster will appreciate these tips. I certainly do. I am a big fan of your photos, especially the Times Square one. Any post processing tips?

sdommin,
what kind of setting did you use for your Las Vegas Nightshot? (I'm interested in city shots with more lighting) Thanks in advance for any suggestions

BottomBracket wrote:
Lessons from the master! Thanks Scott, I am sure mknabster will appreciate these tips. I certainly do. I am a big fan of your photos, especially the Times Square one. Any post processing tips?

Thanks, BB! I appreciate the kind words. The Times Square picture brings up another tip that I failed to mention: bracket, bracket, and bracket!!! Scenes like that one would be almost impossible to get with just one exposure (because of the tremendous brigtness range). With that photo, I used 2 different exposures, one for most of the scene, and one for the large sign on the left side. I combined the 2 in post-processing.

That photo was taken at 1/2 sec., f3.2 (ISO100). I didn't follow my own advice ("keep the aperture at f4"), because I was up in the Eiffel Tower, which was swaying back & forth in a light breeze. I kept changing both the aperture and shutter speed to find the best combination for that particular scene at that particular time. I did a lot of bracketing (see the above post by me).

Vegas is great for cityscape nightshots! I have a few of them hidden here & there in these galleries:

http://www.pbase.com/s​dommin/desert03 (Canon G3)
http://www.pbase.com/s​dommin/roadtrip04 (Leica D2)
http://www.pbase.com/s​dommin/utah04 (Leica D2)

Wow thanks sdommin! That's the kind of answer i was looking for in the firat place, no offense to anyone else. But i will definatley use this tonight, thanks again!

My general advices for night shooting:

1. Use stable tripod and remote control (shutter delay is also possible).
2. Use always ISO50, any other ISO number has some visible noise.
3. Use shutter priority Tv mode or Manual M mode. Start first from Tv mode and half-pressing the shutter button to determine approximately the proper shutter speed&apperture. Set shutter speed at >= 1.3 sec in order to get Canon in-camera noise reduction feature involved, it is a very good noise reduction even it causes a little delay when saving the file to flash. Use Auto WB or Tungsten, or Fluorescent WB depending of the light sources. If necessary you could use manual focus to infinity.
4. Regarding the apperture - Canon G6 lens is very good and there are no significant problems shooting at maximum apperture F2.0-3.0 Some other Gx (G1,G2, G3, G5) cameras have some purple fringing and shooting at appertures F4.0 - 5.6 is the best. Do not use apperture F8.0 because here start some other lens problems.
5. Use Raw format. It has better ability to correct over/under/ exposure shots than Jpeg, it can also setup WB in Raw converting process. It can be converted to Tiff and then in PS to high quality Jpeg and avoid nasty artifacts that you could find in smooth non contrast areas of Jpeg photo. You could also convert Raw to high quality Jpeg (it is better and larger than in camera compressed Jpeg). Depending of the light sources and exposure mode used you could get under/over exposed shots - use exposure bracketing or shoot several shots around the auto exposure (check the histograms of the photos for proper/best/ exposure).
You could use super-fine Jpeg as well - in this case you should make several shots at different WB (normally Auto WB and Tungsten WB) and use exposure bracketing.
6. Try to shoot 1/2-1 hour after sunset when the contrast between sky area and other areas is not too much. Sometimes in only 5 minutes the sky is changing, do not miss the right moment. Not every day is good for shooting (example cloudy/rainy days).
7. Choose the best frame for the photo. Try to avoid moving objects, bright light at the lens and lens reflections, if necessary change the position and use more zoom. Closeup scenes sometimes have some barel distortion as well.

That is all. Success!
Sometimes night photos are much more interesting and colourful than day time photos.

Greetings,
Roumen

Thanks Scott! I knew there was stacking involved. Times Square has a lot of details that require different exposures. I like bracketting too - it was a luxury during the film days but with digital, it's a must for tricky exposures. Man, I look forward to your new pics.

I'm new to the forums and I thank you for your great input. I'm going to take your advise and I hope to get great results with my night shots.

Thanks,
michael

Can I use the Automatic Exposure Bracketing feature to shoot three images and postprocess later so I have the same image without messing with the camera? Thanks for any replies.

RE: AEB and post-processing, absolutely. However, you might have better luck choosing the different exposures manually, since you may need more spread (or more control over where in that spread you expose) than the AEB gives you. Try both though, and see which you prefer.
A tripod or very steady camera bracing will make this far less brain damaging in post-processing.